


Leonine

by MagitekUnit05953234



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Gen, Post-Zegnautus, zine fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-22
Updated: 2019-04-22
Packaged: 2020-01-23 17:35:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18554545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MagitekUnit05953234/pseuds/MagitekUnit05953234
Summary: “You don't deserve what happened to you in your absence.”“Yeah?” Prompto runs a thumb over an angry purple splotch on his right wrist, centimeters away from the scar-strewn brand inked into his skin. “Thanks, Iggy.”





	Leonine

**Author's Note:**

> An alternate version of this fic, titled _Leone_ , is available in the Feenale Fantashy Ex-vee Zine, which is 100% free!

“Are you alright?”

Prompto looks up from his bruised knuckles to see Ignis standing in the space between the two rows of cots. The tip of his cane rests against the foot of Prompto’s cot, which Gladio literally dropped Prompto onto after carrying him out of his cell and down the hall.

“Of course,” Prompto says without thinking about it. The scar across his nose pulls when he offers a hopefully reassuring but ultimately useless smile to Ignis. Prompto can’t really reinforce anything he says to Ignis with his expression anymore since… well.

“Noctis says your injuries were… extensive,” Ignis tilts his head, and Prompto has the sense that —if things were different— he would be pinned under one of Ignis’s signature calculating looks right now. “And that most were too old for a potion to help.”

Prompto huffs out a laugh. “Yeah, well. It’s okay.”

“It isn’t,” Ignis sits on the end of Prompto’s mattress after feeling for the edge for a few seconds. He sits ramrod straight, unlike Noctis who had leaned heavily against the railing when he was in that exact spot not more than an hour ago. “You don't deserve what happened to you in your absence.”

“Yeah?” Prompto runs a thumb over an angry purple splotch on his right wrist, centimeters away from the scar-strewn brand inked into his skin. “Thanks, Iggy.”

There’s some quiet movement. When Prompto glances over, he sees that Ignis is fiddling with the handle of his cane. When did Ignis ever fidget?

“There were reports,” Ignis begins after a moment, then stops, seeming almost surprised by the fact that he spoke. He clears his throat. “When I was eighteen, I was granted access to all but the highest level of secret government documents. Even those that Noctis himself didn’t have clearance to read. It was part of the formalization of my place as his highness’s advisor.”

Prompto turns toward Ignis, wincing at the sting that arcs through his ribs. He presses a trembling hand over the worst of it and waits for Ignis to continue.

“I read a great many out of curiosity. I wanted to see the world clearly, and to me that meant knowing as much about it as I could. If it was knowledge that very few others had, then it was even better. I did have something of an inferiority complex I suppose, though outward appearances would suggest the opposite.”

Prompto isn't sure where this is going, but he's had so few sit-down talks with Ignis since Altissia so of course he's going to listen. While Prompto always hovered around Ignis after his injury, supporting him and filling the tense silences with inane chatter, it was always just that. Inane.

“There was one that I found particularly concerning. I pored over it and all related reports for an entire day, eventually bringing the lot to the man who penned them at what I'm certain was an ungodly hour of the night. Do you know what it is the reports were on?”

Prompto feels constricted, suddenly. He takes a breath. “What?”

“You,” Ignis sets his cane to the side and clasps his hands in his lap. “And your origins. Your creation, if I may say it as such, as well as your unintentional but not unwelcome rescue by a Lucian operative.”

Prompto is crumbling. He is turning to dust, he is being torn in two. He is burning, like he’s back in front of that campfire with nothing but fear in his heart and an impulse to do something terrible. “You _knew_ ? All this time, and you _knew_? And you let me— you let me...”

“I knew,” Ignis says, simple as that. “As did the Crown. And it was understood that you are a Lucian, independent from your creator, and that you were not the slightest bit a threat to Lucis nor its people. Not even the prince.”

The fire licks up Prompto's trembling limbs, searing his rabbit-quick heart. “I didn't… no one _told_ me. I had no idea why I… I had no idea what the codeprint was. I was always so terrified of anyone seeing it, because I knew it was something bad. Something that could get someone hurt. And that was it. I didn't know. And _you did_.”

“It was your rescuer’s desire that you were to live as normal a life as you could, unaware of the unusual circumstances around your birth and your adoption into a Lucian family.” Ignis pauses. He turns his head toward Prompto, and Prompto has to stop himself from looking away. “That was, in retrospect, a mistake.”

Prompto blood bubbles and pops in the heat. “Who rescued me? Was it someone I know?”

“It was,” and there is a flash of crystalline light, and Ignis is presenting Prompto with the gun that Prompto was gifted at the conclusion of his Crownsguard training. The engraving on the barrel reads _Lion Heart_. “He looked out for you when he could.”

Prompto takes the gun from Ignis’s hands, and simply holds it. “Oh,” he says.

Later, when he returns to Lucis with his best friend trapped in hell and the sun dying out, Prompto seeks out the one person who saw everything that Prompto was before he was Prompto.

He knocks on the door to Lestallum’s command center, and enters when he is granted permission.

“Argentum,” Cor Leonis sets down his pen and turns icy eyes to Prompto. He must see something, because he pushes his paperwork away and leans forward, just a little.

“Marshal,” Prompto drops his wristband, beloved and hated and worn by time, on the desk. “We have a lot to talk about.”

**Author's Note:**

> Follow me on Twitter [@compromisedunit](https://mobile.twitter.com/compromisedunit)


End file.
